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COBfRIGHT DEPOSrr 



Charles Brockden Brown 

A Study of Early American 
Fiction 



BY 

MARTIN S. VILAS, A. M. 




BURLINGTON, VT. 

FREE PRESS ASSOCIATION, 
1904. 



L, -SS 

FEB 13 1905 

COPY 15. 



Copyrighted by Martin Samuel Vilas. 
1904. 



The interest in Charles Brockden Brown and his 
works arises largely from his ranking" position among 
American Prose Writers. Hence, it is not expected 
that an estimate, somewhat extended and somewhat 
critical, of his writings is likely to become popular. No 
other than this, save very brief sketches of Brown and of 
what he has done, is known tO' the writer. It may be, then, 
that the student of American hterature will find in this 
book, written five years ago, something suggestive, per- 
haps something usually called original. 

MARTIN S. VILAS. 

1904. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 

Page. 

Condition of Literature when Brown wrote. 9-15 

1. Usual manner of literary development. 9 

2. America different from other nations. 9-12 

(a) Reasons for differences and conditions governing 

here. 9-11 

(b) Situation when government established. 11-12 

3. Literary meagreness in England. 12-13 

4. Condition of English fiction. 13 

5. Condition of American fiction and disadvantages of 

writing. 14-15 

CHAPTER H. 

Charles Brockden Brown. 

Brown's Life and Works. 16-18 

Brown's works romances rather than novels. 18 

CHAPTER in. 

"Wieland." 19-26 

1. Adaptation of manner of conception from, "Caleb 

Williams." 19 

2. Outline of story. 19-21 

3. Examination in detail. 21-26 

(a) Weaknesses in conception of plot. 21-25 

(b) Weakness in development. 25-26 

(c) Strength of whole. 26 

CHAPTER IV. 

"Ormond." 27-30 

1. Outline of stoiT. 27-28 

2. Critical examination. 28-30 

(a) Superiority over other tales of Brown. 28-29 

(b) Unnaturalness and inconsistency in development 

of characters. 29-30 

(c) Positive excellencies in details and as a whole. 30 



CHAPTER V. 
'Arthur Mervyn." 31-33 

1. Outline of story. 31-32 

2. Critical study of work. 32-33 

(a) Defective points in expression of leading char- 

acters. 32-33 

(b) Good descriptive art shown hut much verbosity 

and redundancy. 33 

CHAPTER VI. 



'Edgar Huntly." 


34-39 


1. Outline of story. 


34-35 


2. Literary analysis of work. 


36-39 


(a) Comparison of somnambulism of story with ven- 




triloquism of "Wieland." 


36 


(b) Tendency of characters to long soliloquy. 


37 


(c) Brown did not understand human mind. 


37-38 


(d) Descriptive power. 


38 


(e) Comparison with Cooper. 


38-39 


(f) Meritoriousness of work. 


39 


CHAPTER VH. 




'Clara Howard." 


40-43 


1. Outline of story. 


40 


2. Detailed examination. 


40-43 


(a) Defects in method of conducting story. 


40-41 


(b) Defects in plot. 


41 


(c) Sentimentalism. 


41-42 



(d) Characters not true to intended representation. 42-43 

CHAPTER Vni. 

"Jane Talbot." 44-46 

1. Outline of story. 44 

2. Critical examination. 44-46 

(a) Lack of vigor in conduct of story. 44-45 

(b) Sentimentality and general weakness of char- 

acters. 45 

(c) Summary. 45-46 

CHAPTER IX. 

Influence of European Writers on Brown. 47-50 

1. Scope of Brown's reading. 47 



2. Effect of English writers and English philosophy. 48-50 

(a) Godwin. 48-49 

(b) English Philosophy. 49 
(c) Jane Austen. 49-50 

CHAPTER X. 

Influence of Brown on Shelley. 51-52 

CHAPTER XI. 

Influence of American writers on Brown. 53-54 

1. American Religious Conditions and how they affected 

Brown. 53-54 

2. "Charlotte Temple" and "Female Quixotism." 54 

CHAPTER XII. 

Analytical study of Brown. 55-61 

1. Use of English. 55-56 

2. Value to himself of his philosophy. 56-57 

3. Intrinsic merits. 57-61 

(a) A philosopher rather than a poet or painter. 57-58 

(b) His idea of nature and his philosophic expres- 

sion of it. Effect pessimistic, not optimistic 58-CO 

(c) But attitude lay in physical weaknesses. 60 

(d) Genuine greatness and absolute worth. 60-61 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Influence of Brown upon American literature. 62-66 

(a) Conditions unfavorable for retention of Brown. 62 

(b) Suggestion of Cooper, the bold painter. 62 

(c) Inutility in investigation of fancied likeness. 63-64 

(d) Suggestion of Irving, the master of smooth, easy 

English prose. 64 
(e) Suggestion of Hawthorne, the consummate 

artist. 64-65 

(f) Suggestion of Poe, the untamed morbid genius. 65-66 

(g) Not a great man but fitted to be first novelist; 

so influence great. 66 



CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN. 



A Study of Early American Fiction. 



CHAPTER I. 



CONDITION OF LITERATURE WHEN BROWN WROTE. 

Literatures like Constitutions are not made; they 
grow. Like the growth of the coal mine, they form, 
harden and mature from the timber of other ages, of 
times well nigh forgotten, and from materials usually 
overlooked by the ninety and nine. Literature is the 
clear lake in which may be seen mirrored the vegetation 
that grows near it, the animal life that appears above and 
around it and the movements within its horizon. 

That the beginnings of every nation in literature 
have been in verse, not prose; that the development of 
her prose has seldom antedated the development of her 
material resources is something generally recognized as 
almost a truism in the history of literatures. In the 
United States we note the rare exception. The rule has 
been true because with most nations we mark their rise 
from a condition of barbarism by long, slow stages to 
civilization and culture. The people in the early periods 
of progression have not the intellects capable of carrying 
on the successive steps in argumentative prose but their 
fancies are pleased by ballads descriptive of the heroism 



10 

of themselves and their ancestors. But America received 
her origin and early development not through an An- 
chises and an Aeneas carrying their "sacra patriosque 
penates" to found a new city to rise by the fostering care 
of Olympus, nor yet, through a Hengist and a Horsa that 
bore to new shores a barbarous vigor and independence, 
but she received them at a stage in the world's history 
when the blackness of ten centuries of gloom had 
but fairly rolled away, when the civilized world, rejoic- 
ing anew in its rediscovered strength, was investigating 
and progressing as never before and had sent some of 
its best blood across the western seas to colonize and 
found new nations. The long years of evolution from 
the uncivilized to the civilized that marked the growth 
of European nations were absent here. For without the 
institutions of the Old World, the New yet possessed 
their training and influence and considered herself as 
good as her fathers. The United States, though her tui- 
tion has been derived from all the world, yet is in lan- 
guage, institutions and laws, the child of England. To 
her she has ever turned to draw the inspiration that has 
set her alive to^ the best instincts within herself. 

Moreover, poetry, the language of passion and im- 
agination, could have, at the beginning not much in 
common with our fore-fathers unless it be used to illus- 
trate some teaching of their strict Galvanism or to warn 
more effectively than could prose the sinner heedless of 
the coming "Day of Doom." To subdue the forests, 
to clear the land, till the fields and build homes amid an 
environment of savage beasts and savage men required 
a strong arm and a stout heart with but little demand 



11 

for the intellectual training that was able to present the 
best of the new renaissance which was moving Europe 
from the Mediterranean to the Arctic Ocean. 

When to the stern realities of their natural sur- 
roundings, were added the yet sterner ones of political 
oppression from the mother country, we find a condition 
which exercised the minds of America along lines averse 
to scholarly ease and enjoyment but which caused the 
latent culture of their intellects to spring up in vigorous 
pratorical and argumentative prose, — that form of liter- 
ature which, first after the distinctively religious, finds 
place in our literary history. Until the new nation was 
established on an independent basis there were but few 
opportunities for the fostering of even that kind of liter- 
ature best suited to the tastes of Americans, save as the 
necessities of the times called it into play and gave it 
tone and finish. Her M'athers and her Edwards had no 
use for stories to entertain. Their time was occupied 
with the saving of souls while the spirit wliich Macaulay^ 
says was employed to suppress l:>ear-baiting — "not be- 
cause it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave 
fun to the audience" — was exercised also against fiction. 
Her men of scholarly tastes, her Otis and her Hamilton, 
must look to the great interests of the nation regardless 
of the delights of pure literature. 

After 1789 it took a number of years for the nation 
to find herself, to realize that she was a nation and that 
others expected of her in all respects a nation's work. 
To England we still turned our eyes in all things, and 

I Macaulay's Hist, i, Ch. 2. 



12 

as a nation that had gained its independence by force 
from her and one that was still treated with ill-disguised 
contempt by Great Britain, the United States felt much 
emulation to try its pinions on flights attempted with 
such wonderful success by the long line of English men 
of letters. In the words of Prof. Beers/ "An effort was 
made to establish by tour de force, a national literature 
of a bigness commensurate with the scale of American 
nature and of the destinies of the new republic." Even 
the gallant deeds of the revolution remained unsung. 
To quote from Stedman-, "No poetry was begotten in 
the rage of that heroic strife; its humor, hatred, hope, 
suffering, prophecy, were feebly uttered so far as verse 
were concerned, in the mode and language inherited 
years before from the coarsest English satirists. Some 
few original notes were heard among our pipings."^ 

But in prose dressed in the garb of peace when the 
great need for Henry and Adams had died away, Ameri- 
ca's record was bare of excellencies and even the mother 
country had only an inartistic beginning to its credit. 
The "Ten linked chain" of the artificial school of Pope 
had for a century and a half bound English verse. It 
was necessary to go back to Pope and Goldsmith or take 
up with Darwin and Hayley. The new natural school, 
at the head of which were Thomson, Gray, Cowper and 
Burns, had not then gained much influence, while 
Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey were too ardently 
democratic to gain at once great strength on this side 
of the Atlantic. Scott, Byron, Keats, Shelley and 

I. Beers. 2. Stedman. Poets of Am. p. 16. 



13 

Tennyson were yet to come. The new life from Carlyle 
and Macaulay had not at that time been infused into 
history and essay. The various phases of social life had 
not been held up to view by Dickens and Thackeray and 
the Edinburgh Revieu', which afterward exercised so 
wide an influence through Brougham, Sidney Smith and 
Jeffrey, was yet to enter upon its career. 

Not till the eighteenth century was well started, 
had prose fiction been cultivated by English authors. 
Sidney's Arcadia, Bacon's Atlantis and More's Utopia 
hardly entitled them to a place in the literature of fic- 
tion; so that Daniel De Foe is said to be the founder 
of the English novel. After him, the names of Richard- 
son, Fielding, Smollett and Sterne appeared with great- 
est prominence. Near the close of the century the novel 
as written by Fielding gave way to the romance and 
Mrs. Ann Radcliffe became the most popular English 
writer of fiction. Her greatest works, "The Romance 
of the Forest," and "The Mysteries of Udolpho," at- 
tracted considerable attention. At about the same time 
came Horace Walpole's "The Castle of Otranto," Wil- 
liam Beckford's "Vathek," M. 0. Louis's "The Monk," 
and "Tales of Terror," Mrs. Shelley's "Frankestein," 
William Godwin's "Caleb Williams" and Jane Austen's 
"Pride and Prejudice." But Jane Austen hardly be- 
longs to the same class with those preceding her in 
the list. The tone of her writings is more healthful and 
in style she has more connection to the later school of 
Scott than to the morbid spirit of these "Pestilent Night- 
mists." 



14 

In the United States it might seem that the scenes 
of the Colonial and Revolutionary Wars formed the 
most fitting setting for romance, but the perspective of 
romance needs to be at some distance from the present 
to be able to gather to itself the glamour of imaginative 
glory. I quote from Prescott^ : "Great doubts were long 
entertained for our capabilities for immediate success in 
this department. We had none of the buoyant, stirring 
associatioms of a romantic age; none of the chivalrous 
pageantry, the feudal and border story or Robin Hood 
Adventure; none of the dim shadowy superstitions and 
the traditional legends which had gathered like moss 
round every stone, hill and valley of the olden country. 
Everything here wore a spick-and-span new aspect and 
lay in the broad, garish sunshine of every day life. We 
had none of the picturesque varieties of situation or cos- 
tume; everything lay on the same dull, prosaic level, in 
short, we had none of the most obvious elements of 
poetry; at least so it appeared to the vulgar eye."^ In 
the last decade of the eighteenth century Mrs. Rowson 
sent forth "Charlotte Temple, A Tale of Truth." In 
the words oi Richardson,^ "Its long drawn melancholy 
is unrelieved by a touch of art; it is not even amusing 
in its absurdity." Soon after came "Female Quixotism" 
by Mrs. Tenney, which is aptly described by the above 
characterization of "Charlotte Temple." American men 
of culture felt that they must do something to show 
their independence of England and their equality of in- 

1. Prescott's Miscellanies, C. B. Brown, p. 51. 

2. Richardson A. Lit., Vol. 11, p. 285. 



15 

tellect and training. Dwight and Freneau had exhibited 
this spirit in the realm' of poetry but in the domain of 
prose fiction, save for the lachrymose productions of 
Mrs. Rowson and Mrs. Tenney, nothing deserved the 
name. Even Hawthorne in his preface to "The Marble 
Faun" complains of his position in words that more fitly 
apply to the time of which we speak. "No author with- 
out a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a 
romance about a country where there is no shadow, no 
antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, 
nor anything but a common-place prosperity in broad 
and simple daylight as is happily the case with my dear, 
native land. It will be very long, I trust, before romance 
writers may find congenial and easily handled themes, 
either in the annals of our stalwart republic, or in any 
characteristic and probable events of our individual 
lives. Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens, and wall- 
flowers need ruin to make them grow." 



16 



CHAPTER II. 

CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN. 

Probably no author could have felt more this dearth 
of suitable surroundings than Charles Brockden Brown, 
who stands to American fiction as Daniel De Foe to the 
English novel. Born in Philadelphia of Quaker ancestry 
January 17, 1771, his naturally delicate constitution was 
rendered still more fragile by his retiring, sedentary 
habits. From early childhood he was an earnest student 
and an omnivorous reader, possessing one of those minds 
that by intuition grasp and absorb all things ''bookish" 
within reach of it. At the age of 16, he had planned 
three epic poems on the discovery of America and the 
conquests of Peru and Mexico. Fortunately for him, 
no vestige of these now remains. Not long after, he be- 
gan the study of law but soon abandoned that profession, 
for which he was unfitted, and gave himself entirely to 
literature or "bookmaking"^ as he called it. 

In 1798 he may be said to have made his permanent 
home in New York City, after frequent visits and here 
he published his first romance, "Wieland," four years 
after the publication of William Godwin's "Caleb Wil- 
liams." The second novel of Brown, "Ormond," ap- 
peared in 1799. These twoi works excited much interest 
on both sides of the Atlantic and considerable favorable 
comment arose from literary men upon the unusual 

I. Duyckinck's Cyclo. of Am. Lit., Vol. i, p. 612. 



17 

powers of conception and execution displayed in them. 
This was undoubtedly pleasing to Brown, as it would 
be to anyone, and served to reconcile him more fully to 
his unique position in the United States. In 1798 the 
yellow fever visited New York City with a violence 
similar to that which had marked its appearance in Phil- 
adelphia live years before. On account of the presence 
of his friend, Dr. E. H. Smith, a young man of much 
promise, in the city. Brown refused to leave New York. 
Soon after the death of Dr. Smith from the disease, 
Brown was himself taken down with it and nearly died. 
Upon his recovery he gave forth his third romance, 
"Arthur Mervyn; or Memoirs of the Year 1793," a story 
laid near Philadelphia, which gives a supposed account 
of the yellow fever as it came upon that city. This was 
succeeded soon after by "Edgar Huntly; or The Adven- 
tures of a Sleep-walker," a wild imaginative tale. Brown 
published "Clara Howard" in 1801 and in 1804 appeared 
"Jane Talbot," first published in England, the last of 
the six works of fiction that form the basis of Brown's 
reputation and of what I shall say of his works. 

Only little more need be said of Brown save in di- 
rect reference to these six. During the year he published 
"Clara Howard," he returned to' his native city and made 
his home in the family of his brother. Here in 1803 he 
undertook the management of "Literary Magazine and 
American Register." Brown had in 1799 established the 
"Monthly Magazine and American Review" in New 
York City, which did not survive the year, but the 
"Register" maintained a life of considerable vigor for 



18 

five years. During' the last years of his Hfe, Brown 
wrote several poHtical pamphlets, which detracted noth- 
ing from his reputation and a number of biographical 
works were added to his name. The health of the author, 
al^^•ays delicate and infinn, now began to give way en- 
tirely under what appeared to be consumption ami he 
died on the J2d of February, 1810, aged 39, leaving a 
wife and four children. 

In the prose fiction of Brown there is to me much 
more of the ivmance than of the novel. — though it 
would seem that in most he intended to make them a 
recital of the events of real life and not to place in them 
so much of the lofty and supernatural as to entitle them 
to the designation of romances; but it was difficult for 
Brown to write what we to-day consider a novel. His 
mind was too morbid, too nuich absorbed with that which 
is bevond it all. 



19 



CHAPTER III. 

WIELAND. 

In none of our author's romances is the ruling spirit 
of his mind shown out with so great distinctness as in 
his first, "Wieland, or the Transformation," which is 
commonly said to be similar to Godwin's "Caleb Wil- 
liams." Indeed, the influence of Godwin is apparently 
clear, but it seems to me impossible for Brown to write 
similarly to another. jBoth stories start with an idea 
which is to be worked out according to the theory of the 
author and events as we go on shape themselves to a 
form suitable for this. Godwin wrote his story to show 
forth the evils of the social system in England, how ut- 
terly impossible it was for the poor to contend for jus- 
tice against the rich or noble and to illustrate how the 
remnants of the spirit of chivalry in England might af- 
fect a mind morbidly sensitive to the dictates of "honor." 
In "Wieland" we have the ill effects that might arise 
from the use of ventriloquism and a demonstration of the 
advisability of keeping one's mind clear of fanciful theo- 
ries. In both there is a conception of a grim destiny that 
pursues and overhangs its object as relentlessly as the 
night follows the day. The victims of this destiny have 
forebodings of impending drx>m and are gloomy. They 
writhe and struggle, but there is no escape. Neverthe- 
less, the mind of Brockden Brown was peculiar unto 
himself and that peculiarity leaves its impress on every- 
thing that he wrote. 



20 

The scene of "W'ielaiul" is laid in Pennsylvania 
among a family named Wieland of German descent, cul- 
tivated and of excellent standing. The contemplation of 
religious topics seems inherited. The father has died in 
a mysterious and terrible manner and the son has de- 
rived from him a melancholy and superstitious constitu- 
tion of mind, which his studious habits and uneventful 
life have developed into an amiable fanaticism. The 
family live close to the Schuykill ; near by is the sister 
who tells the story and the most of the time Pleyel. the 
brother of ^^leland's wife. Strange voices are heard by 
different members of the family, sometimes commanding 
them to do certain acts, warning them of danger or tell- 
ing them of events beyond the reach of human knowl- 
edge. The "dead vast and middle of the night" is em- 
ployed for these things, which affect the head of the fam- 
ily in particular as indications of a supernatural agency. 
A destiny of horror seems to hang over the family and 
we read on anticipating some dread event. 

About this time a middle aged man named Carwin 
of rustic appearance, comes to them somewhat myster- 
iously. In spite of his apparent rusticity, his knowledge 
and readiness are unlimited and invariable. There is 
wonderful music in his voice which affects the sister par- 
ticularly in a most powerful manner. The attractiveness 
of his conversation is such that he is admitted to great 
intimacy at Mettingen, the home of Wieland. The 
strange voices and warnings of danger increase in fre- 
quency, the perplexity and apprehension of the family 
are daily augmented and all seem to wait anxiously for 



21 

the denouement. At length on the bidding of a solemn, 
mysterious voice, Wieland offers up on the alter of a sub- 
missive piety his wife and young children and attempts 
the life of his sister who escapes by accident. He is ar- 
rested, convicted of murder, and confined in a dungeon as 
a lunatic, but bears it all with the heroic calmness of one 
confident that he has fulfilled the will of the Almighty. 
During an escape, he learns that he has been deceived 
and misguided by the ventriloquism of Carwin, who, 
prompted by pure malice, has taken pleasure in playing 
his tricks upon the family. The wretched Wieland, in 
the frenzy of the discovery, kills himself and the now 
regretful Carwin disappears from the scene and the story 
closes with the marriage of the sister and Pleyel, whose 
bride has recently died. As the moral of the story, so 
far as the family is concerned, the author, supposedly 
the sister, states "If Wieland had framed juster notions 
of moral duty and of the divine attributes, or if I had 
been gifted with ordinary equanimity or foresight, the 
double-tongued deceiver would have been baffled and re- 
pelled."^ 

Griswold in his "Prose Writers of America,"^ takes 
issue with the author in calling Carwin a "demon," 
"fiend" and actuated by "diabolical malice," but much 
allowance must be made for the horror of those repre- 
sented as present at the time. Certainly, it is difficult 
to see how one could take a pleasure in doing what the 
ventriloquist did here without it is a "fiendish" and 
"devilish" pleasure and actuated by " diabolical malice." 

1. "Wieland," p. 251. 

2. P. 108. 



22 

The method of explaining the death of the elder 
Wieland by spontaneous combustion was one that Brown 
obtained from the doctors as he indicates in a foot note.^ 
It was a favorite device of the author to introduce some- 
thing that had especially attracted his interest into his 
works, then give a reference to explain it in a foot note, 
as in this instance and that of ventriloquism.^ 

Griswold^ can see nothing peculiar in people of the 
education and intellect of this family being thus de- 
ceived, nor does he think that the explanatio^n given of 
these mysteries "renders it in any degree uninteresting," 
but Prof. Beers refers to the ventriloquism of 
"Wieland" under the statement that "Brown frequently 
raises a superstructure of mystery on a basis ludicrously 
weak." Such cases certainly have been known, but the 
training of the people must have been unusual to admit 
of it, and I do not agree with Griswold^ that Brown was 
"a careful anatomist of the mind and familiar with its 
wonderful phenomena." It is true that he evidently had 
made a careful study of the mind, but that he ever un- 
derstood its healthy workings I do not believe. To do 
this one must himself possess a mind that has for con- 
siderable periods of time felt the delight of living in that 
state of semi-unconsciousness to our physical being which 
we call health. So only will he be able to feel as other 

1. "Wieland," p. 38. 

2. "Wieland," p. 207. 

3. Prose Writers of Am., p. 109. 

4. Am. Lit., p. 82. 

5. Prose Writers of Am., p. 109. 



23 

men have felt and usually feel, to come in contact with 
and measure himself by the common standard. This 
great pleasure and power we are assured Brown never 
possessed; accordingly, he was given constantly to in- 
trospection and self-contemplation. If the chimeras and 
superstitious vagaries of "Wieland" obtained credence in 
a family of education and strength of mind to-day, we 
should consider them fit inmates for an insane asylum; 
certainly, for a retreat for nervous invalids. No man of 
good intelligence simply because he hears a mysterious 
voice destroys his loved ones unless crazy or a religious 
fanatic. 

As to the lack of strength in the explanation, it does 
not seem to me to be a source of strength. To make it 
successful, the primary cause must be assigned to glaring 
mental weakness; then when we are wrought up by the 
horrors and pathos of the story, it turns out to be the 
miserable trick of a miserable adventurer. And the in- 
voluntary feeling is to wish much that we had been pres- 
ent to inflict summary punishment on the malicious 
wretch and tell Wieland, "man of sorrows" though he 
be, what a miserable, wretched idiot and hideous crim- 
inal he has been. The transition is too sudden. 

The pathos and horror of the preceding scenes are 
worthy of a sterner setting. In Wieland's description of 
the destruction of his wife, so dear to him, there is an 
intensity of the terrible equal to some of the best 
passages of the kind in any language known to 
me. All the ghastliness of Euripides' Medea 
or of Lady Macbeth walking in her sleep while 
she rubs her hands and ejaculates "Here's the smell of 



24 

blood still ! All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten 
this little hand ! Oh ! Oh ! Oh !"^ gives not so much hor- 
ror to the surroundings as does Brown here while there 
is an added pathetic element that appeals to our tenderest 
sympathies. 

But, if Brown introduced the mystery at all, he 
must needs explain it in some such way. Our education 
is too advanced and our ideas too open to admit of other 
expedients save those of the juggler. It is this that makes 
the trick beyond success to the healthy mind under any 
circumstances. We have no atmosphere of superstition 
which will allow it. Scott in his treatment of the Scottish 
Highlands had a location imbued with the superstitious 
and a people by instinct and training adapted to it. He 
might introduce a touch of such here and there, yet 
leave it unexplained. Shakespeare in Macbeth need not, 
for the same reason, explain the witches or Banquo's 
ghost; but in America in the nineteenth century nothing 
approaching it would go unchallenged. 

But in addition to this, when we have finished "Wie- 
land" there seems something "uncanny" about it and 
we cannot make ourselves believe that ordinary mortals 
would so conduct themselves. It is right here that I add 
emphasis to my criticism that Brown did not understand 
the human mind. If he understands it. he must be able 
to show forth its workings as they are so that they seem 
to us possible. A romance does not necessarily deal en- 
tirely with the possible, but if, in a romance, a family 
of our country and of recent time are taken as a basis of 

I. "Macbeth." 



25 

the events, they should not act as though they belong 
more properly to another world than this. 

Again, none of the characters are really strong 
characters. They are decidedly unpractical and we learn 
nothing from looking upon them. Great pains are taken 
to teach a moral, but it is a moral for the most part 
taught from those that are not "of the earth earthy." It 
was, indeed, a fault of the time that merely showed, per- 
haps, that Brown read the literature of the day; never- 
theless, we are forced to criticise by what seems to be a 
common-sense standard. Of the practical, »alert man or 
woman of affairs, there is nowhere a glimpse. The im- 
puted authoress and heroine lives in a house by herself 
with a single servant and an endeavor is made to create 
a model womanly character of a stronger mold than the 
ordinary, but unexplained apprehensions constantly bring 
her down into the "Slough of Despond." She hears for 
the first time the voice of the unknown Carwin and im- 
mediately is "like Niobe, all tears," and spends the next 
day in musing and in gazing at her sketches of the sup- 
posed countryman. We are continually wishing that the 
characters had something to do, that they had less time 
for "musing," for "contemplation" of "thoughts omin- 
ous and dreary." We wish they would do something as 
we would do, were we in their places, but this they never 
attempt, even though their lives depend upon it. 

A peculiar and exceedingly weak deviation is made 
at the close when we are looking with great interest to 
the climax by side-tracking the reader into the midst of 
many details in regard to "Louisa Conway, Major 



26 

Stuart, and Maxwell," — none of whom really had any- 
thing to do with the inception and development of the 
plot and about none of whom do we care anything. It 
would seem that Brown felt bound to get another moral 
lesson into the work and so fastens it on at the close, 
since he could see no place where it was admissible. 

On the other hand, there is much of strength in 
the romance, much to give with justice a' reputation to 
the author. We are interested always and sometimes, 
yes often, in spite of ourselves. We never want to stop 
until we have seen the end and the ability of a strong 
and imaginative perception is everywhere visible; in 
fact, this is the most commendable quality of the whole. 
Since the defects of the tale are for the most part of the 
same general nature as the defects of contemporaneous 
literature, they are far more excusable. The work is 
one of the best of Brown's and, unquestionably, the best 
of its kind yet from an American. 



27 



CHAPTER IV. 

ORMOND. 

Ormond, the second romance of the author, is, in 
my judgment, his best work. The scene is placed in 
New York and Philadelphia and included in point of 
time the yellow fever period of Philadelphia. An artist 
of considerable skill is obliged to engage in his father's 
occupation of pharmacy to support his family. A young 
partner, seemingly indebted to him as much as possible, 
robs his patron and leaves him to blindness and beg- 
gary. His daughter, Constantia [Dudley, an only child 
and the heroine of the whole, bears up most courageous- 
ly with an "affection that hopes, and endures, and is 
patient" through trials that would have crushed a St. 
Simeon Stylites. The deadly work of the yellow fever 
gives ghastliness to the scenes through which she and 
her father pass. Just as the life for them seems to be a 
brighter one in propect, when Constantia discovers and 
causes to aid her, the villain that had cheated her father 
and the scourge of yellow fever has passed, Ormond 
appears upon the scene, somewhat like the dark and mys- 
terious Carwin, with many things unknown about him, 
though he strives to appear all frankness. 

His peculiar notions of marriage cause the death 
of the woman he has seemed to love until he meets Con- 
stantia. The continued friendship of Constantia for him 
after his base desertion of this woman, Helena Cleves, 



28 

and her consequent suicide, is one of the incongruities 
of the story. The father of Constantia is murdered by 
an unknown assassin and Ormond pursues the maiden 
with dark forebodings as to the future. Her financial 
condition bettered by the bequests of Helena, she is 
about to set sail for Europe with her friend, the relator 
of the trials and virtues of Constantia, when the vio- 
lence of Ormond brings him to his death by the hand of 
the maiden but not before he has slain- in a fit of caprice 
Craig, the despoiler of the fortunes of the family, who is 
revealed as the assassin of Dudley at the instigation of 
Ormond. The tale ends with Constantia in quiet happi- 
ness living like a vestal virgin with her friend in Eu- 
rope. 

The romance, on the whole, stands considerably 
above others of Brown, though destitute of the power of 
"Wieland." The author evidently wishes to exhibit in 
Constantia a model of womanly virtue, a Lucretia with- 
out her peculiar misfortunes, one that can rise above 
disappointments and adversity, the patient Evangeline, 
but with a wisdom and thrift that could provide means 
where none existed, retaining all the time an "idyllic 
grace" and beauty. Brown's vivid impressions of the 
yellow fever will not allow him to pass over the oppor- 
tunity to exhibit the horrors of its ravages. He de- 
lighted to have a touch of mystery in his tales — hence 
Ormond and his secret closet. Prof. Beers^ suggests 
that Ormond was an attempted reproduction of Aaron 
Burr. It is not improbable. The ground of resemblance 

I. American Lit., p. 8i. 



29 

is broad. In the portrayal of this character, I detect 
mOire art than anywhere else in Brown's works. The 
character seems to be at all times true to the con- 
ception of him at the outset and he forms the most 
brilliant production from this point of view in the work, 
or, indeed, in any work of the author. 

The story is, perhaps, too protracted in the part 
that deals with the misfortunes of Constantia to be in- 
teresting. It is, however, difficult to paint such a char- 
acter as this and reveal by many details the very "Sab-^ 
baths of her soul" without running extreme danger of 
wearying the reader and making the whole seem com- 
mon-place. But Brown has done this part well, yet when 
in contact with Ormond we are at times fearful that her 
character will break down. When we would expect her 
to deny her society to him after she has learned what 
he really is, she continues the friendship to her own 
evident misfortune. Notwithstanding, her personality is 
a good one and her individuality strongly drawn. 

The introduction of the authoress, the friend of 
Constantia, to such prominence in the last part is a de- 
cided weakness. There is, moreover, considerable of the 
namby-pamby in making her leave her bridegroom of 
a few weeks, the '"'silent partner," in Europe, while she 
goes on a quest of many months for her lost friend. 
The searcher has not seen her friend for over three 
years, but is absorbed entirely in the search^ now driven 
into the depths of despair by the report of her death, 
now borne upward into the seventh heaven of happiness 
by an unexpected discovery of her alive and well, while 



30 

the solitary husband "unwept, unhoiiored and unsung," 
holds liis own as best he can in far away London. This 
circumstance is an added argument in favor of what 
has already been said that Brown did not understand 
the workings of the human mind. 

In opposition, the very positive excellence is pos- 
sessed by the work, both positive and unusual for the 
time, of being in nearly all its bearings something entire- 
ly within the limits of a common-sense form of life. 
When we are able to feel that men as we find them would 
have done thus in a similar position, we are pleased and 
interested. Writers able to create such characters en- 
dure. In the words of Irving,^ "They have rooted 
themselves in the unchanging principles of human na- 
ture." Also, the style of English is less labored and 
stilted than in "Wieland." As a production from any- 
one, it was entitled to much commendation. As a pro- 
duction from an American, it deserved warm praise. 

I. Mutability of Lit. 



31 



CHAPTER V. 

ARTHUR MERVYN. 

With the terrors of the plague in Philadelphia in 
1793 as a surrounding, came forth Brown's next publi- 
cation, "Arthur Mervyn," the principal actor of which is 
a country boy of delicate physique and sensitive nature. 
His father, a farmer with but little education, had mar- 
ried an ignorant servant girl of his. This drove the 
young man from home and he came to Philadelphia with 
almost no money and without friends or acquaintances. 
He was found one night sick with the prevailing illness 
near the dwelling of a physician who took him into his 
home and with his wife nursed him through the dis- 
ease. On his recovery, he detailed his story to his bene- 
factor and this recital forms the major part of the tale. 
On his arrival in the town after passing through several 
very strange experiences, he is engaged as secretary by 
Waldeck, an unscrupulous man of the world, the keeper 
of a fine establishment and by his means the rustic youth 
soon acquires many of the graces of culture. There is 
but little actual outline to the plot, bu| whatever interest 
is awakened, as we read, is centered around the criminal 
career of Waldeck, the connection of the youthful 
Mervyn with him and the descriptions of the yellow 
fever. A wonderful number of characters are brought 
in and the centrifugal force is in constant danger of 
overcoming the centripetal. Waldeck finally dies in a 



32 

debtor's prison and Mervyn marries Mrs. Fielding, a 
widow of foreign birth, several years older than himself, 
who, until the last part of the story, had not appeared. 

The character of Mervyn is hardly a success unless 
he be denominated "the boy wonder," but, though at 
times of remarkable discernment of mind, he at others 
acts w4th strange lack of foresight. Like the principal 
characters in all Brown's romances, save possibly 
"Ormond," he is unable to think of more than one thing 
at a time, as instanced in his conduct in making the 
journey on horseback with Eliza Hadwin.^ One point 
or phase of a matter gains his attention and he follows 
that oblivious of all things else. It is difficult to see 
hO'W anyone of sound intelligence could act as he did 
when he detailed his affection for Eliza Hadwin to Mrs. 
Fielding and at the same time assured her that the .one 
he marries must be her "exact counterpart;"^ yet he is 
in blissful ignorance of the trend of his remarks or the 
cause of the confusion awakened and when later thq 
kind friend, after much explanation, makes the situa- 
tion plain to him he nearly faints in surprise and un- 
expected rapture. 

Waldeck is the best drawn character but weak- 
nesses in him are apparent. The general cast of his 
character is that of the specious, ruthless villain and he 
seems to be plotting rascality constantly, while frequent- 
ly pretending contrition. Yet the author would several 
times attempt to make him appear not really a villain 

1. "Arthur Mervyn," Vol. ii, p. 6"]. 

2. Vol. II, p. 177. 



33 

but led on by a spirit of evil that frequently possessed 
him. No one but a deep, determined villain could accom- 
plish the dark deeds of Waldeck. Compunction and con- 
trition at the murder of Watson should properly be exul- 
tation, while such men as he do not leap into a river with 
a sincere desire to drown themselves. We finally are 
left in doubt as to whether Colvill and Waldeck are 
really one or not. The melancholy close ol Waldeck' s 
career is made a means to illustrate the social evils aris- 
ing from imprisonment for debt and to show the hor- 
rors of the prison. The character of Mrs. Fielding, ap- 
parently intended to be the heroine of the story, is not 
one that adds strength to the whole. 

The writer expended all the art in the tale on the first 
volume and the second consists in a mere multiplicity of 
characters, sudden transitions and attempted dramatic 
poses. The work will be read, if read at all, principally 
for its excellent descriptions of the ravages of yellow 
fever, which we presume to be drawn from the actual 
experiences of the author. Here there is considerable 
descriptive art shown and in several places an extremity 
of the horrible is indicated by giving a few ghastly in- 
cidentals, as in Chap. IV, Vol. i. Had Brown cut out 
one-half the story by lopping off details and extraneous 
characters, the result would have been a positive im- 
provement. 



34 



CHAPTER VI. 

EDGAR HUNTlvY. 

"Edgar Himtly or Memoirs of a Sonmamlnilist," 
followed "Arthur Mervyii." The seat of the story is in 
Pennsylvania near the forks of the Delaware. A friend 
of Hnntly, named Waldegrave, suddenly disappeared 
and no trace of himi is discovered, though the search is 
made far and wide and the supposition is that he has 
been murdered. On a return^ home by night, Huntly 
wanders along an unfrequented path and, by the light 
of the moon near the residence of a friend, perceives an 
unknown- man digging in the ground under a tree and 
making frequent stops when he seems overcome with in- 
tense grief; soon the man closes the hole and Huntly 
follows him a long distance through the wood till he dis- 
appears in a cavern. The digger proves to be a sleep- 
M-alker, named Clithero, a mysterious foreigner em- 
ployed in the neighborhood. The suspicion arises that 
Clithero' is the assassin of Waldegrave and Huntly takes 
it upon himself to watch and follow him when sleep- 
walking. In carrying out his self-imposed mission, the 
young man meets strange adventures in the wild forest. 
Finally, brooding over the matter, Huntly himself walks 
in his sleep and on recovering his senses finds himself 
in a deep cavern miles from home with a panther and a 
small band of sleeping Indians between himself and the 
open air. He slays the panther and one of the Indians 



35 

and effects his escape, taking with him a prisoner of the 
Indians, a young girl whom he rescued. In completing 
their escape, Huntly meets a number of encounters with 
the Indians and behaves with considerable bravery and 
resolution. After passing through great hardships and 
privations, the young man reaches a settlement and dis- 
covers the instructor of his youth and his dearest friend, 
an Englishman named Sarsefield. The story of Clithero, 
previously related to Huntly, showed him to be a young 
man of a peculiar cast of mind who was overwdielmed 
w^ith grief at misdemeanors, largely fancied, that he had 
committed in England. 

The former friends of Clithero, on account of in- 
juries to whom he was now suffering remorse, now ap- 
pear and Sarsefield is the husband of his former patron, 
to whose niece he had been engaged. Clithero now dis- 
appears and when discovered is really a maniac, re- 
garded with pity by his friends that had thought him 
a double villain. Imprisoned as a lunatic, he escapes 
while on board a vessel and drowns himself rather than 
be recaptured. The mystery of the disappearance of 
Waldegrave is cleared by the explanation that he is 
slain by one of the party of Indians that had been com- 
mitting depredations in the neighlx)rhood. 

The tale ends with all in contentment, but the des- 
tiny of Huntly, so far as marriage is concerned, is un- 
certain; whether he wedded Mary Waldegrave, the sis- 
ter of the deceased, or Clarice, the former affianced of 
Clithero, — this last on the common assumption of a 
reader that such an one as Huntly must necessarily 
marry one of the characters of the romance. 



36 

Prescott^ in his essay on Brown points out that 
while the somnambtihsm of Hiintly performs the same 
function as the ventriloquism of "Wieland," it has this 
merit over the latter in "that it does not necessarily im- 
pair the effect by perpetually suggesting a solution of 
mysteries and thus dispelling the illusion on whose ex- 
istence the effect of the whole story mainly depends." 
But I think the difference is merely a difference in kind 
of method employed. Ventriloquism is suggestive of 
mystery and, if employed for deceit, its probable effects 
at once suggest themselves. Sleep-walking is not a 
mystery in its manifestations; hence, no mystery of the 
kind pictured in "Wieland" can be built upon it. I dis- 
agree with Prescott in that sleep-walking is manifestly 
used to explain several of the mysteries of the story, as 
the connection of Huntly with a band of Indians;^ but, 
truly, as sleep-walking is thus of a different kind and 
also is not so prominent in the story, incidental rather 
than fundamental, it does not in the end detract from the 
strength of the plot as much, certainly, as does the ven- 
triloquism of Brown's first romance. This, it seems to 
me, is the true distinction. 

To bring two sleei>walkers into the story is surely 
a source of weakness. Apparently, Brown wants to 
bring Huntly into contact with the Indians without de- 
lay and the easiest way that occurs tO' him is to cause 
Huntly to turn somnambulist and reach the desired 
point unknown to himself. 

1. Miscellanies C. B. Brown, p. 31. 

2. Edgar Huntly, p. 215. 



37 

The story is in almost all places weak where the 
hero moves alone, for there, as in the case of Brown's 
leading characters, he is prone to "ruminate," to "medi- 
tate deeply," and to go over by himself step by step 
by a wonderfully slow process the incidents that have 
led him to his present position. The ability to grasp 
the situation and act upon it instantly is wholly wanting. 
Whenever anything approaching it is attempted the 
actor invariably makes a mistake, as when Huntly leaps 
from the precipice to avoid his supposed enemies. When 
Huntly,^ after several wonderful escapes goes into a 
strange house and there finds Sarsefield,^ his old friend 
whom he had not seen for years and who had supposed 
him dead, the older man, instead of considering it enough 
that he sees Huntly alive and before him, holds him at 
arm's length and with eyes fixed oii the floor, goes 
over in detail in order to make sure of himself the un- 
accountable escapes through which he knows the young 
man has passed. Not only can the mind at such a time 
act no faster than the tongue can speak, but an escape 
from death is not satisfactory unless it can first be re- 
solved into a syllogism. 

The happenings that beset Huntly are such that we 
almost weary because of their seeming impossibility, but 
we certainly are prepared to accept more from him after 
being presented with the incomprehensible character of 
Clithero. No sane man would act the part of this char- 
acter after he has unwittingly but most opportunely put 
W^iatte out of reach of inflicting more injury to his long- 

I. P. 191. 2. P. 209. 



38 

suffering sister and to mankind in general. Again we 
have added proof that Brown, the philosophical mind 
analyst, did not comprehend the operations of the nor- 
mal mind. 

There is considerable power of description shown 
in telling of the wild scenery through which Huntly 
passed and the last half of the tale in particular is vivid 
and interesting, especially Huntly' s escape from the first 
panther^ and his encounters with the savages.^ 

Clithero becomes burdensome in the first part, but 
the author, as though aware of this, suddenly throws 
the hero into the midst of savages and thereafter there 
is interest. 

It is the only one of the tales of Brown in which 
Indians appear and in the strongly drawn though brief 
illustrations of savage character, we at once think of 
Cooper, but there is no suggestion of Chingachgook 
and Uncas. The wildman of the American forest is 
crafty, cruel and ferocious, though no pains are taken to 
paint him in vivid colors. 

When we have brought up Cooper, we, immediate- 
ly, also compare Brown's description of forest scenes 
and, especially those in which savages take part, with 
like passages in Cooper. We note the absence of the free 
and easy swing of the narrative that marks the clear 
coloring of Cooper. Even in the most interesting and 
dramatic of the scenes of Brown, there seems always to 
linger a sternness and tenseness which fail to put us 
entirely at ease. 

I. P 109. 2. Ps. 155 and 165. 



39 

Brown principally lacks movement, the passion for 
soliloquy in his principal characters being omnipresent. 
It is an analytical and' so a philosophical trait, but 
when we are amid scenes where lives hang upon the 
issue of the moment, the soul demands a painter, a 
word-poet, not a mind analyst that stops to discover why 
we have thought and acted so as to draw ourselves into 
the present crisis. It is, indeed, because in this Cooper 
has satisfied us that we accord him greatness and to that 
degree to which we can ascribe this quality to Brown, we 
admire "Edgar Huntly." But Brown has but little of 
the genius of the prose-poet, — him that might write a 
perfect epic though he may not understand metrical 
verse. He is analytical, not expository. 

Pride in his Americanism led to this — the first ef- 
fort to lead the events of a work of fiction among sav- 
ages and forest wilds. Hence, it is both interesting and 
praise- worthy, though it may lack artistic merit and con- 
tain many passages that are insipid and overcolored. In 
his preface the author says, "One merit the writer may 
at least claim; that of calling forth the passions and en- 
gaging the sympathy of the reader by means hitherto 
unemployed by preceding authors. Puerile superstition 
and exploded manners; Gothic castles and chimeras are 
the materials usually employed for this end. The inci- 
dents O'f Indian hostility and the perils of the western 
wilderness are far more suitable; and, for a native of 
America to overlook these, would admit of no apology." 



40 



CHAPTER VII. 

CI.ARA HOWARD. 



"Clara Howard" is a loA^e story, pure and simple — 
exceedingly simple. The hero, Philip Stanley, is an 
orphan boy whose parents were poor. During the ab- 
sence of an elderly benefactor, Howard, an Englishman, 
in his native country, Stanley becomes acquainted with 
the Wilmots, brother and sister. The sister, considerably 
older than Stanley, becomes engaged to him and on the 
death of her brother feels doubly her dependence upon 
Stanley, who has never known much of women. Mr. 
Howard returns accompanied by his wife, recently 
wedded, and her daughter, Clara Howard, whose father 
was a cousin of Howard. Stanley is taken into the 
family practically on the footing of a son. The young 
people become attached to one another but on his telling 
Clara of Mary Wilmot, she sends Stanley from her to 
fulfill his engagement, but Mary Wilmot has disappeared 
and the story dwells upon the details relating to this and 
to the restoration of Stanley to the favor of Miss Howard. 
Miss Wilmot finds consolation in another and all ends 
in contentment. 

Experience in works of fiction did not add to 
Brown's ability in writing them, judging from the ex- 
amples of the six taken for consideration. The story is 
carried on entirely by correspondence, for the most part 
between Stanley, Miss Howard and Miss Wilmot. This 



41 

is a hazardous method at best as the author must, to 
make the story plain, cause the participants in the letter 
writing to say to one another many things already 
known by them, thus giving a stage effect to everything 
and causing us to consider that letter writing is the busi- 
ness of these people, not a means of social intercourse 
and improvement, or else that we have found people en- 
deavoring to outdo pne another in a mutual burlesque. 
In encountering this hazard. Brown has in no degree 
escaped the danger. 

There is at the bottom almost nothing for a ro- 
mance or even for a novel. A young man falls in love with 
a young lady while engaged to another. He neglects to 
speak of the situation until too late to be of use, but the 
second lady on learning of his engagement orders him 
to marry his first love with a dauntless self-sacrifice that 
reminds one of the parting injunction of the Spartan 
mother to her son going out to battle, "bring back your 
shield my son or be brought back upon it." The young 
man meekly strives to obey but cannot bring matters to 
a head as the second young lady knows she has lost his 
affection and she goes off to marry another, as it finally 
results, to the very great pleasure of the other two prin- 
cipal characters. We are constantly led to think that 
had the young people had less time from their business 
to write letters, there would have been less ground for a 
story and so they would not have made such fools of 
themselves. 

Brown here falls into the sickly sentimentalism of 
the time as represented on this side of the Atlantic most 



42 

prominently by Mrs. Tenney and Mrs. Rowson. I 
quote the opening paragraph, a part of a letter from 
Stanley to Miss Howard — a quotation typical of the 
entire story — "Why do I write? For whose use do I 
pass my time thus? There is no one living who cares 
a jot for me. There was a time when a throbbing 
heart, a trembling hand, and eager eyes were always 
prepared to read and ruminate on the scantiest and poor- 
est scribble that dropped from my pen; but she has dis- 
appeared; the veil between us is like death." That the 
hero of a story could write such idiotic nonsense, and 
that to the one to whom his affections were given, simply 
because he could not find another to whom he had been 
engaged just when he wanted to see her, is enough to 
condemn the whole work. 

The effort is to make Stanley the worthy, industri- 
ous, sensible young man striving to rise from poverty and 
obscurity and to create in Miss Howard a model young 
woman, but both are persons of moods and tenses, writ- 
ing the most incoherent, nonsensical stuff to one another, 
alternately issuing and retracting stern decrees upon 
each other with all the solemnity of an edict from Rome. 
The young man has sisters practically dependent upon 
him>, but he seems forgetful of his obligations. He 
is honest and upright, but mentions several times^ 
how the wealth of Miss Howard strikes him most 
favorably, and this with more than the wonder of pover- 
ty. The actors suffer anguish of heart, but they never 
think of doing anything in such a case save to tell of 

I. Ps. 329 and 330. 



43 

it in a manner that would drive to desperation the one 
to whom it is told. Indeed, they seem to write letters 
largely for the purpose of exciting one another or of 
exercising their power to use a multitude of words when 
the)'- have nothing to say. Stanley, after receiving an 
upbraiding letter from Miss Howard, gets wet and in- 
curs a fever, which to his love-sick brain means cer- 
tain death, and he immediately, out of fear that the 
lady may not hear the details of his intrepidity, dictates 
a long, carefully-worded letter to her, telling her how 
he has gained his death saving another from drowning 
and giving "the prayers of a dying man for thy felic- 
ity."^ Whereupon, as might be expected, the young 
lady recants, the perishing hero survives and is restored 
to his true love accompanied by much letter-writing 
strongly punctuated with exclamation points. The tale 
has not much to recommend it except its correct diction. 

I. P. 310. 



44 



CHAPTER VIII. 

JANE TALBOT, 

The last work of fiction of Brown, "Jane Talbot," 
is the poorest of all. Jane Talbot is the daughter of a 
country gentleman whose wife has died leaving a son 
and daughter. The son is a worthless scamp, who ap- 
parently cares nothing for his sister and contrives to 
ruin his easy-going father by his wild and riotous ex- 
travagance. After leaving Philadelphia, the home of 
the family, he goes to France while the father dies, leav- 
ing the daughter to the care of Mrs. Fielder, a widow 
of fortune. Jane is prevailed upon to marry Talbot, 
a respectable, elderly man, who kindly goes off and dies 
just when the wife has become more attracted by a 
younger man, Henry Colden, of unsettled habits, who 
is exceedingly distasteful to Mrs. Fielder and the threat 
of disinheritance is held over Mrs. Talbot, if she does 
not immediately cast o;ff Colden. After attempts at ex- 
planation and pacification, Colden, who has been ma- 
ligned to Mrs. Fielder, goes away to a distant part of 
the earth where he is stranded on a savage coast and 
returns to America finally after four years' absence, weak 
from disease, to find that Mrs. Fielder is dead and Mrs, 
Talbot is still waiting for him, living with his married 
sister, so that the usual finale results. 

The story, like "Clara Howard," is carried on en- 
tirely through correspondence and the same criticism 



45 

made upon that point in that story appHes here, and 
again it may be said that there is not much to recom- 
mend the tale aside from its good EngHsh ; aside also, it 
might be added, from its lessened use of ponderous 
phrases as compared with the first four of Brown's ficti- 
tious works. 

The novel is full of gush and unhealthy sentiment. 
The hero, Colden, is an irresolute young man who at 
once "gives up the ship" when ordered to do so by Mrs. 
Fielder and his demeanor toward her is but little less 
than abject. Instead of minding his own business and 
marrying the girl of his choice when both are ready, 
after the fashion of the ordinary young American, he 
bends the knee in submission, the world no longer holds 
for him any attraction, he folds his tent and steals away 
leaving the almost equally sentimental and insipid young 
lady to mourn for years his recreancy. It is an illustra- 
tion of what is true in all Brown's works of fiction that 
it is indeed unfortunate for a young man if the rom- 
ancer endeavors to make a hero of him. Golden' is de- 
ficient in moral courage and in the most important quali- 
ties that give one success in life. Such an one has no 
right to talk of those things entirely unfitted for him 
for never could he provide for a family except through 
outside assistance. 

The unity of the work is considerably broken in 
the first part by spending so much time upon Mrs. 
Talbot's brother. Dowden, in his "Life of Shelley,^ 
quoted the criticism of Mary Shelley upon Jane Talbot: 

I. Vol. I, p. 473. 



46 

"Read Jane Talbot; very stupid book; some letters so- 
so ; but the old woman in it is so abominable, the young 
woman so weak and the young man (the only sensible 
one in the whole) the author of course contrives to 
bring to idiotcy at the end." This criticism is of course 
dogmatic and uncompromising, but it contains more 
truth than fiction. Altogether, it would have been more 
creditable to Brown had some one else written "Jane 
Talbot." 



47 



CHAPTER IX. 

INFLUENCE OF EUROPEAN WRITERS ON BROWN. 

That Brown was affected in his works of fiction by 
his predecessors and his contempoTaries in the art has 
been indicated, indeed, it goes without saying. Every- 
one is the product of his time and his environment. Now 
and then an intellect stands forth that seemingly has been 
able so to gather impressions from the "storied urns" 
of the past and from the realities of the present as to 
"send messages into Philistia" to appear like the warn- 
ing voice of a prophet, or in other words of a man in 
advance of his time. The effect is caused by a higher 
point of view or by superior comprehension, possibly by 
both. The question then should not be, — Was Brown 
affected by other writers in his field? — but, — How was 
he affected by them? We must take it for granted that 
Brown, a "literary Doge," had read De Foe, Richard- 
son, Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne. That he was ac- 
quainted with the lesser lights that followed admits of 
no doubt to one who has read his works. Had he not 
read most of those named at least, we surely could de- 
tect the fact, though we may not be able to say we see 
the positive influence of a particular author. The mighty 
movements following the French Revolution, when the 
works of Rousseau, of Voltaire, Montesquieu, D'Alem- 
bert and of Diderot came to invigorate all that read the 
English language, bore with full weight upon Brown as 



48 

is evident from his first romance, "Wieland," and from 
his political essays. 

It is stated^ that Brown was an ardent admirer of 
Godwin and of his almost equally famous wife, who was 
an extremist on the question of women's rights and 
from her influence seems to have arisen his "Alcuin, a 
'Dialogue on the Rights of Women." Dowden in his 
"Life of Shelley"^ speaks of Brown as "Godwin's 
American disciple in romance." As Godwin and his 
wife were both ardent students of the French "Encyclo- 
paedists," we may say further that his literary friends 
must, in all probability, have lead him to the common 
fountain head. Both Godwin and Brown wrote much 
in the ruling spirit. Godwin was influenced by Utopian 
ideas and he believed, like his son-in-law, Shelley, that 
society should be overturned; hence his "Caleb Wil- 
liams," the underlying principle of which is a character 
worked out by philosophical analysis to develop certain 
social and political phenomena in their effects upon the 
mind and upon society. It was using what we would 
to-day call the scientific method. 

It is evident that Brown adopted this mode of pre- 
sentation in "Wieland," "Ormond," "Arthur Mervyn," 
and in "Edgar Huntly." And in all his tales there is 
one character that stands out before the others with a 
second of nearly as great consequence. In dealing with 
these two characters in particular, and in an especial de- 
gree with the former, Brown makes it his business to^ be 

1. Pancoast Intro, to Am. Lit., p. io8. 

2. Vol. I, p. 472. 



49 

careful in his developments of moods, to cause the 
changes of mind to come by gradations that we may 
see the effect psychologically and from it draw the les- 
son. Sometimes he seeks to make the demonstration 
from other than the |)rincipal characters, as when with 
much circumlocution, he endeavored to- draw the irrele- 
vant and useless moral at the end of "Wieland." To 
point out the moral at the end of any tale is like telling 
a joke and then naming it, but in this we see some of 
the effects of his time which seemed to consider that 
we need not be expected to' retain our common sense in 
reading or writing a novel or romance. 

But in the first four of the works of fiction of 
Brown, and in "Wieland" in particular, there is an en- 
tirely evident atteni])t not merely tt) follow the manner 
of plot of Godwin, Init to adopt his literary style. He 
endeavors by a few details, as in the description by Wie- 
land of his crime, in the yellow fever scenes of Arthur 
Mervyn and in the escape from the first panther in Edgar 
Huntly, to impress the outlines upon the mind after the 
exceedingly simple but intensely sublime action of 
"Caleb Williams." 

If Bnnvn read French political and social philoso- 
phy, still more likely is it that he read Locke and Hume 
and was, we may conclude from his political essays, 
familiar also with the new science of Adam Smith and 
with the writings of Burke. 

It is common to connect the name of Jane Austen 
(1775-1817) with that of Brown as though she in some 
way influenced him, especially through her best known 



50 

work, "Pride and Prejudice," which exercised a very- 
beneficial effect on the fiction of the time. But this novel 
was pubhshed in 1813, three years after the death of 
Brown, and all her works came forth after 18 10. Ac- 
cordingly, she could not have affected him and I fail tO' 
find any evidence of an influence from Brown upon her. 



51 



CHAPTER X. 

INFLUENCE OE BROWN ON SHELLEY. 

I at this point consider the oft' mentioned influence 
of Brown upon Shelley. Dowden^ quoted the words of 
Peacock, that "Brown's four novels, Schiller's Robbers 
and Goethe's 'Faust,' were of all the works with which 
he was familiar those which took the deepest root in 
Shelley's mind and had the strongest influence in the 
formation of his character." But Shelley was only 
eighteen when Brown died and his wild, imaginative 
spirit was easily caught by the ruling sentiment of the 
fiction of the day which he attempted to represent and 
portray, but the "Romances of pseudo-passion and 
pseudo sublime" could not equal the almost blatant pas- 
sion of "Zastrozzi" and "St. Irvyne the Rosicrusian." 
The former was written for the most part when Shelley 
was but seventeen. They are boyish creations and the 
influence of Brown can be seen only in the familiar pre- 
dominence of the speculative and abnormal rather than 
in any one particular point of likeness. I have said 
Shelley attempted to portray the ruling spirit of romance 
but he could not do this without striving to outdo it. 
His nature would not admit of it. The boy gives rein 
to his imagination. E^ch character is intense. In 
"Zastrozzi" Matilda, Julia, the "Enchanting and con- 

I. "Life of Shelley," Vol. I, p. 472. t 



52 

genial female," Verrezi and the towering and haughty- 
passioned Zastrozzi are characters that appeal to us be- 
cause of an indescribable touch everywhere of an artistic 
fancy. Undoubtedly Brown helped to give form to this 
fancy, but Shelley, even as a boy, soared above Brown, 
for his wild, images could brook nothing ever builded 
by another. That Brown affected permanently the tenor 
of Shelley's writings I am unable to verify or credit. 



53 



CHAPTER XI. 

INFlvUENCE OP AMERICAN WRITERS ON BROWN. 

Not SO interesting because not so conclusive is the 
question of the influence of writers on this side of the 
Atlantic. In spite of the fact that during a part of his 
life speculative philosophy overshadowed Brown's relig- 
ion, he was by nature deeply religious and highly moral. 
The intense and narrow as well as intensely narrow 
theological spirit of Puritan New England, the most 
cultivated part of America, added great stress to the 
conception that all writing should have a moral bear- 
ing, that nothing could be unmoral, but if not decidedly 
moral, everything must be immoral. Hence, the ex- 
cellence of a tale was in its moral or religious strenu- 
ousness, and for that matter poetry and prose both were 
measured by the same cast iron standard. The horrible 
custom of constant self -inspection that reached its height 
under Hooker, the Mathers and Edwards had spent it- 
self before the time of Brown. While the philosophy of 
Godwin led away from religion. Brown had the true 
Quaker spirit of his ancestors intensified by some lin- 
gerings of the creed of the author of the famous 
"Magnalia Christi Americana." Brown himself prob- 
ably was unconscious of this last, yet one could not live 
in the culture of the north and escape it. 

The great Unitarian movement had just started 
when Brown wrote. William Ellery Channing grad- 
uated from Harvard the same year "Wieland" appeared, 



54 

but James Freeman was re-ordained pastor of King's 
Chapel in Boston in 1787 with a revised Non-Trinitar- 
ian hturgy and the prenatal breathings of the work of 
the Wares, Andrews Norton, Theodore Parker and 
even of Emerson were in the air. Indeed, Brown was 
active in anticipating this by his adoption of the phil- 
osophic principles of Godwin, which were really the 
ideas of French and German thinkers modified by Eng- 
lish minds. Moreover, the great transcendental move- 
ment meant nothing more than this; and Carlyle put 
into English ritual the creed of the continent which 
Emerson was to conform to- American freedom and 
vigor. 

Whether Mrs. Rowson and Mrs. Tenney directly 
affected him or not may be uncertain, as these ambitious 
women simply caught the temper of English minor fic- 
tion in a more gushing style than usual, but it appears 
to me that Brown seemed to consider that his first four 
works of fiction were too intensely dramatic and dealt 
too much with the impossible, so determined to make his 
others more true to life. In other words, it amounted 
to his dropping the philosophy of Godwin and coming 
down to the same basis with "Charlotte Temple" and 
"Female Quixotism," a basis made more enduring in his 
case by his stronger hand and deeper common sense. 
Brown could not drop his philosophy and write good 
novels, but he might retain it and write good romances 
for the time. The latter is what he did in his first four 
works of fiction while his last two are merely novels a 
few degrees better than the milk and water productions 
of his two lady contemporaries. 



55 



CHAPTER XII. 

GENERAL CRITICAI. STUDY OE BROWN. 

Brown's use of English is usually that of a scholar, 
but is what many would call over-scholarly. With him 
the study was not to find the simplest word or phrase to 
express the exact meaning but apparently to select the 
heaviest and most cumbersome. In "Ormond"^ he says 
that clothing "stood in need of ablution;" again in the 
same^ "all hope of happiness in this mutable and sub- 
lunary scene was fled." In Edgar Huntly^ is stated 
"my stormy passions had subsided into a calm, por- 
tentious and awful;" again in the same'* "the channel 
was encumbered with asperities." His characters never 
think or meditate, but it is their habit to "ruminate" 
so much that it becomes a pernicious custom. He in- 
variably uses "somewhat" for something. One more 
passage will serve to illustrate fully his old-fashioned 
preciseness and insipid pedantry, — "Helena Cleves was 
endowed with every feminine and fascinating quality. 
Her features were modified by the most transient senti- 
ments and were the seat of a softness at all times blush- 
ful and bewitching. All those graces of symmetry, 
smoothness and luster, which assembled in the imagina- 
tion of the painter when he calls from the bosom of her 
natal deep the Paphian divinity blended their perfections 
in the shade, complexion and hair of this lady."° 

I. P. 58. 2. P. 231. 3. P. 29. 4. P. 185. 
5. Ormond, p. 116. 



56 

Brown had been trained a Quaker, but that in no 
sense excuses him for his inaccurate uses of "thee," 
"thou," and "thine." They are introduced along with 
the newer forms with apparent indiscriminateness. One 
sentence uses the old, the next the new and soon 
the old appears again with no apparent object for 
the variation.^ The kind of diction referred to is ex- 
cessively common and in the eyes of the critic to-day is 
far more serious than in the time of the author, serving 
to render neutral many of the positive excellencies of 
the work, as they are usually not merely faults of diction 
but also of style. Undoubtedly, Brown might have im- 
proved these things with better care. All the most im- 
portant of his works were written within the space of 
ten years and his rapidity approached that of Scott for 
he was a very voluminous writer. 

The close of our author's works is usually weak, 
giving the appearance that he tired as he went on or 
left them and became occupied in part by other things. 
In "Arthur Mervyn" he apparently kept increasing 
characters towards the close to compensate for actual 
dramatic action. But Brown is not lacking in invention 
or originality and we would never think of charging him 
with plagiarism or with any undue imitation of another 
author. He is conscientious everywhere and in every- 
thing. I agree with Prescott^ that were his faults re- 
moved, he might not have been so' good, — ''Si non erras- 
set, fecerat ille minus." 

1. "Edgar Huntly," ps. 135-136. 

2. Miscellanies C. B. Brown, p. 53. 



57 

At any rate as he lost his Utopian ideas, his at- 
tachment for the theories oif Godwin, as he came to be 
an ardent advocate of Christianity and endeavored to 
drop the extravagance of his first work, we may see in 
the rehgious experiences of Golden in "Jane Talbot," 
an effort to typify himself, but in making these changes 
he lost his power — the ability to describe graphically and 
to awaken interest in us by the almost indefinable some- 
thing. As says Pattee,^ "It is hard to' lay down one of 
his romances unfinished; one reads on and on in a sort 
of ghastly dream until at length the end of the book 
completes the hideous nightmare." 

Some men are great in themselves, others great in 
the eyes of the world through association with great 
names or because they mark epochs in events. Would 
Gharles Brockden Brown be considered a writer of much 
prominence, were he not the first author of prose fiction 
in America? The day that would cherish writings with 
the style of Brown has passed. He did not possess 
the power, take him all in all, to entrench himself in 
principles of nature and of literature that are unchang- 
ing. He supplied the demands of the time with consid- 
erable credit and praise. A scholar with the instincts of 
a scholar, he did a scholarly work, but he had not 
enough individuality and keen discernment to discard 
the objectionable in contemporaneous literature and to 
write as the young prophet of the new and great 
America. A philosophic rather than a poetic spirit, he 
had not enough of the true and exact philosophy to un- 

I. Amer. Lit., p. 105. 



58 

derstand that to portray man in a form that will endure 
he must be portrayed as he is and that nature to be 
pictured so that the painting will be entitled to hang 
upon the galleries among the works of great artists must 
be tinted not in all the hues of the rainbow, unless it 
has the rainbow's careful blending and that reality must 
dominate art. 

The spirit of the French renaissance united with 
the culture of England and with the freedom of the new 
nation was not sufficient to cause Brown to discard en- 
tirely the spirit of the old classical school of Pope, 
while the so-called "nature movement" led on by 
Thomson in ''The Seasons" had been insufficient to turn 
his mind tO' nature in her actual form. He could not 
describe a cavern, a precipice or a deep ravine without 
letting his imiagina;tion lead him^ into something that is 
gruesome. Thus nature becomes not an emblem of the 
bright and beautiful, but the rq)resentation of an infin- 
ite and awful power which hangs over and around all 
things. This representation is expressive to us and we 
should study it by night time when the stars are shinin'g, 
in the howl of the tempest when the sky is blackened by 
storm clouds, but we should study it with a nameless, in- 
definable dread, we should "ruminate ominously" upon 
it, goi back to our "habitation" oppressed with mel- 
ancholy and spend the night in a vague unrest with an 
incomprehensible and indescribable something preying 
upon our souls, tO' arise in the morning to new "rumina- 
tions." And man is, though perhaps "The proper study 
of mankind," yet a part of this terrible and mystic na- 



59 

ture, is always incomprehensible and the subject of 
strange vagaries, whims and contrivances from on high. 
We study these as phenomena of nature and, particularly, 
as they relate to us and are "philosophical," but the more 
we study, the farther removed are we from ourselves, 
the more unfitted do we become to go on with the dull, 
prosaic duties that devolve upon us. But we are to 
"muse perpetually" upon it all, though never are we satis- 
fied, never brightened, never go back with a glad and 
cheerful heart to say, — I am of nature and of God. I 
exist as a part of it and of Him. If he is great and 
wonderful, aye, awful at times in his manifestations, I 
rejoice in it, for it exalts me that see in it an expression 
of myself. The Almighty is great and powerful, so am 
I in a small degree as a manifestation in one form of 
Him. Hence, I am glad to be alive, to see these mighty 
movements all related to me and I to them. I breathe in 
the air — an extraordinary manifestation of his power — 
and it becomes a part of my being. I eat and thrive on 
the infinite resources of a miraculous Providence and I 
am a miracle. Therefore it is glorious to exist in such 
greatness and, like Walter Scott, as a boy, to lie upon 
the ground in a storm m the mountains and clap my 
hands at each thunder peal. 

But these optimistic feelings were not akin to the 
soul of Brown. His philosophy was the philosophy of 
darkness and distortion. He was too sickly and shall 
I say too scholarly; not that he knew too much, for 
scholarship and knowledge are not synonymous, but his 
life was the morbid, introspective life of the study but 



60 

little influenced by the greater life outside. He read of 
nature and of God from books but never fully realized 
that he thus was getting these subjects only from a 
meagre secondhand. The full, rich life of manhood, the 
joy of living never touched him. He realized vaguely 
that in the American Indian there is a creatioii different 
from the ordinary and so something that we call "orig- 
inal" for treatment, but the thought became a fancy be- 
fore it could be fairly comprehended. It slipped from 
him ere he could write it down in vivid colors and he 
remained sombre and desolate trying to write himself 
into a great writer and philosophize himself into a great 
philosopher, though he never yet had reached the life 
he thought to describe save by fleeting moments and he 
existed ever apart from what was and is in the highest 
form the true, the beautiful and so the good. 

But the fault lay not, I think, with himself, but 
that he was by Nature so incomplete a representative of 
man, — an illustration that he cannot be a grasper of a 
number of great truths that is not well or vigorous in 
organization. Brown had not the physical courage nor 
the moral force to drop his books like Thoreau and lit- 
erally to "take to the woods" for long months that he 
might gain vigor and correct conceptions. He was 
bound to his desk and only broke loose when necessity 
drove him on brief excursions. Within the limits of 
his strength, he did a great work. He realized his duty 
to his country and to civilization to contribute as much 
as within him lay and he never faltered though beset 
constantly by weariness and disease. His patience, his 



61 

conscientiousness and his unfaltering devotion to the 
Hght that came to him led him ever on with a resolute 
heart and, even when disease was constantly preying 
upon him, his smile of affection always covered the 
deep-seated anguish. His pure and upright life was re- 
flected in his writings, and if he could not write brilliant 
facts so that they would endure, all things of him ex- 
hibited the greatest of all truths that the highest virtue 
consists in "the perfection of one's self and the happi- 
ness of others." 

It was then a courageous thing to be an American 
writer and especially to attempt to be the first American 
novelist, but Brown constantly displayed that courage. 
Had he not deserved to be first, the position would not 
have been accorded him. If he did not set the pace, he 
started the movement. It is with very great respect and 
considerable admiration that I have studied this ''brief 
but blazing star" that during his short and sickly life 
worked with such unfailing earnestness along lines that 
to him seemed best and highest. 



62 



CHAPTER XIII. 

INFIvUENCE 01^ BROWN UPON AMERICAN IvITHRATURE. 

But what has he done for us? That he was the 
head of an American school of fiction cannot be claimed. 
He lived in a transitional period in literature between 
the stilted, artificial style and what we are fond of de- 
nominating the "natural." Scott came soon after and 
prose fiction was recreated in him and never has lost his 
impress. Soon Brown and authors like him ceased to 
be read. Irving, not a romancer or a novelist, but a great 
prose writer, followed closely upon Brown. If Brown 
was the first American novelist, Irving was the first 
great American prose writer and his style tended to les- 
sen further the influence of the first American novelist. 

Cooper, the "American Scott," improperly so- 
called, ere long gave to American literature a right to 
look with pride upon its producers of prose fiction, and 
again a deep influence was exerted away from Brown. 
American novels that appeared soon after Brown were 
modeled for the most part after Scott and Cooper, as 
"The Buccaneers" (1827), S. B. Judah; "Rachel Dyer" 
(1828), John Neal; "The Betrothed of Wyoming" 
(1831) and "Meredith or the Mystery of the Mes- 
chanza" (1831). That Brown and others of his style 
will ever again be popular is exceeding improbable; we 
may almost say impossible. 



63 

Nevertheless, the influence of our author was con- 
siderable and valuable. Above the elements of weak- 
ness, we have shown, arose many elements of strength. 
The power of a great writer he had at times and we 
catch in "Edgar Huntly" shades of description and 
passages of strong expression that make us wonder if 
Cooper, though so different, may not have caught much 
that led him on from Brockden Brown. It is very prob- 
able. From the defects of another we see how to correct 
ourselves, and Cooper as he heard and read comments 
upon Brown could the better judge how he should act. 
Cooper, the painter of wild America and wild Ameri- 
cans is, indeed, different from Brown, the morbid mind 
analyst. Seemingly, then, only the touchstone of fancy 
could detect a derivation, but I am not one that think 
it necessary to be able to put the finger upon a point or 
principle of resemblance in one writer in order to be 
qualified to say with moral certainty he obtained assist- 
ance from another. It is too much to expect. We have 
in Brown a suggestion of Cooper. It is only a sugges- 
tion but it is enough. 

For purposes of investigation and criticism, how- 
ever, it amounts to but little to say that such an one, a 
writer, was a contemporary of another writer ; therefore, 
the one influenced the other. We have the right to pre- 
sume and assume that every man of letters reads the 
writings of other writers in his field and time and is 
affected by them, unconsciously perhaps and perhaps 
imperceptibly, but the influences are there and his debt 
to them is something; but I do not think that the spirit 



64 

of the Sunday School teacher that would read a moral 
and religious lesson into every word of Scripture should 
dominate literary criticism. I am at times impatient at 
the manifest attempt of many commentators to force 
an issue where there is none and reason out an a priori 
basis until post hoc propter hoc seems to be the law of 
critical study. Generally speaking, give a commentator 
an analogy and he is sure to work out a derivation, but 
the result is frequently as far-fetched and ludicrously 
drawn as some of the various theories as to the origin 
of the English manorial system. 

Irving, who came next after Brown as a prose 
writer, could take courage as the favorable expressions 
upon the "New American" came to him, and I think I 
detect in a few of Irving's works something in style, 
though so different altogether, that reminds me of 
Charles Brockden Brown. The debt to Brown was 
probably considerable of him who wrote to please and 
in so doing tO' instruct, who believed in not taking life 
too seriously or intensely, — a diametrical opposite of 
Brown, 

How far Brown gave suggestions to Hawthorne, it 
is difficult to say. It is common to reason thus : Brown 
was a prose writer, morbid and sensitive, and so was 
Hawthorne, hence the latter probably was something of 
a disciple of his predecessor. But in the first place 
Hawthorne never to me seems morbid. He liked espe- 
cially to work out a peculiar phase in the human heart, 
as the power of conscience in "The Scarlet Letter," but 
that does not prove his morbidness. We might as well 



65 

call every professor of psychology morbid because his 
subject is the human soul. Yet there is a very consid- 
erable likeness in conception and treatment between 
"The Scarlet Letter" and "Wieland" or between this 
and Godwin's "Caleb Williams." Hawthorne was not 
a renowned painter like Cooper whose fame rested in 
his bold vigorous strokes, yet he was a consummate artist 
who delighted in delicate touches, in the subtleties of 
his art; but Brown was nothing of this; still even in 
"The Marble Faun," I obtain a reminder of Brown. 
Here as usual we are unable to say one writer took his 
method of treatment absolutely from another. It might 
on as good grounds be asserted that Brown derived his 
manner of treating "Wieland" directly from Horace 
Walpole's "Castle of Otranto." However, if Haw- 
thorne was not affected by Brown, he certainly was af- 
fected by Brown's mode of conception and unfolding of 
plot. 

Again, we see in Brown a suggestion of Poe, the 
only distinctively morbid character in American litera- 
ture, but if we think he suggests Poe, because Poe was 
morbid, we surely cannot discern much resemblance be- 
tween the morbidness of "Wieland" and "Arthur 
"Mervyn" and that of "The Black Cat," and "The Pit 
and the Pendulum." But there is an actual sentiment 
in "Scarlet Letter" and "Marble Faun," one that never 
excites our ridicule whether we agree in it or not, while 
in the stories of Poe we observe great genius and great 
art, but the genius and the art of an intensely morbid 
nature taking the word morbid in its true sense of dis- 



66 

eased. I cannot be sure that Brown conferred anything 
on Poe. 

It has been said, — and rightly I think, — that to 
study Hterature correctly and determine the value of the 
work of each author, he should be studied with reference 
to himself alone first, next with reference to his place 
in the history of the literature. Then, Charles Brockden 
Brown, not what is called a great man, yet deserves the 
place of first American novelist and romancer because 
he stood forth with enough of ability above the ruling 
style of such writings to confer to his productions that 
which we denominate genius, such that he was able to 
please and instruct his contemporaries, to dignify 
America by a new' title and to serve in a respectable 
degree as a reference and an instructor for those that 
followed him in the hitherto untrodden field of Ameri- 
can fiction. 



tofc 



ERRATA. 

(1) Page 20, instead of Schuykill, read Schuylkill. 

(2) Page 21, instead of alter, read altar. 

(3) Page 22, reference 4 is omitted with quotation from Prof. 

Beers. 

(4) Page 35, in second line of second paragraph, read is instead 

of was. 

(5) Page 65, in the fourth line, read and in place of or. 

(,6) Page 10, in the fourth line of the second paragraph, read 
Calvinism instead of Galvanism. 

(7) Page 11, in the nineteenth line of the second paragraph, 

read pleasure instead of fun, and spectators instead of 
audience. 

(8) Page 13, in the fifteenth line of the second paragraph, read 

M. G. Lewis' instead of M. G. Lmiis's, and in the follow- 
ing line read Frankenstein instead of Frankestein. 

(9) Page 48, in the tenth line of the second paragraph, read led 

instead of lead. 

(10) Page 55, in the ninth and tenth lines of the first paragraph, 

read portentous instead of portentious. 

(11) Page 66, in the ninth line of the second paragraph, read 

writers instead of writings. 



FEB 13 19«? 



LIBRARY OF 



